Michael Haney 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Band Recalls Its Own Copy Protected CD, While Sony BMG Refuses To

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2005 @ 03:44am

    The Last Days of the RIAA

    I've said it before, and I'll say it again. We're seeing the death throws of the RIAA. It took the SonyBMG XCP crap to finally bring the problems of the RIAA to light and make the general public finally wise up and listen.

    Recording studios will turn a blind eye to artists and bands when they complain about copy-protection hurting their reputations and income. Eventually these artists and bands will break off form the studoes and go into business for themselves selling via the Internet. It was start a dangerous trend that may one day lead to the end of the RIAA as we know it.

    Good riddance I say.

    In this new digital age the RIAA has outlived its usefulness and has become a serious burdon. We don't need them anymore. Its time for them to finally realize that and disband.

  • On the post: Sony BMG Knew About The Rootkit Before It Went Public

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2005 @ 12:38pm

    Lawsuit Defense Ruined

    This news basically ruins any defense SonyBMG may have in the current and future lawsuits. They can't claim that they didn't know this would happen becauser its known now that they did ahead of time and did nothing.

    Mr. Spitzer, if you visit TechDirt and Slashdot, please nail SonyBMG really good for this!

    We are seeing the beginning of the end of DRM. This whole fiasco has brought DRM to the limelight and its being cast in a very bad light. Once something has been represented as BAD its next to impossible to get people to think of it as anything other than that. DRM will come to represent something BAD to consumers, and anything that uses it or is found to use it will not sell very well or at all.

    Thank you SonyBMG for triggering the beginning of the end of DRM.

  • On the post: Anime Succeeds By Embracing Fans, Not Treating Them As Criminals

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2005 @ 11:28am

    Fan Fiction, Fansubs and Fandubs

    I'm a fan fiction writer. I have several stories posted to fanfiction.net and other sites. I download Fansubs (Japanese Anime with subtitles edited by fans) and I know a guy who's daughter is a voice actress in Inuyasha Fandubs (Japanese Anime dubbed in English by fans). She's actually very good.

    Basically, its the kind of freedom the Anime/Manga industry gives its fans that made it this popular. I remember reading about Paramount/Viacom suing people because of their Star Trek fan sites. If they treated people like the Anime/Manga community does then Star Trek wouldn't be in such a sorry state its in now. If Star Trek remained syndicated-only it would have been better off too. TV execs just ruin things when they make the screenwriters do things their way. They kill more shows than poor ratings do every time. That's what happened to SeaQuest DSV, the TV execs wanted it to be more of a sci-fi show and they killed it.

    Anyway, I love Anime and Manga. I'm a major fan of Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2. She also created Inuyasha and Urusei Yatsura. Urusei Yatsura was the manga/anime series that started the "Teenage Sex Comedy/Multiple Love Triangle Comedy" genre we all know and love.

  • On the post: Phantom Loses Its Only Shred Of Credibility

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2005 @ 04:21pm

    Phantom Was Promising

    If the technology for the console had been real at all it was pretty interesting. It was basically a game system that used Voxel Graphics.

    Voxels are 3D pixels. A game called Outcast used the technology to some dazzling results even though it didn't use 3D acceleration. Command & Conquer used Voxels to a limited extent to draw and animate units.

    In theory, Voxels can be used to render a very detailed image. If a whole scene is rendered with Voxels you can do things with it that only the newest Polygon based graphics engines are able to do today. The issue with Voxels though is that each 3D Pixel requires a lot of memory and a lot of math processing. Back when Outcast came out the maker of the game was really pushing the envelope where technology stands. Today's faster PCs and the new 64-bit AMD chips can handle it easily. A hardware acceleration for Voxel, which is what the Phantom was supposed to be able to do, would have been very interesting.

    Its sad to learn it was just a pipe dream.

  • On the post: That's One Way To Make Money In Music

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2005 @ 07:15am

    The Wave of the Future

    In this day and age the Internet gives us a lot of power. For bands and artists the Internet gives them the power to break away from the record companies and do their own thing, thus publishing their own music the way they want to. There are plenty of unsigned bands making millions on their own via sites like MP3.com and their own websites.

    Its the wave of the future, a future that's scaring the hell out of the RIAA and that's why they're so desperate.

  • On the post: Comcast Offers To Wire Up Unconnected Customer For Ten Grand?

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2005 @ 11:19am

    Its things like this...

    It's things like this that are making WiFi options more appealing to home users.

    Oakland County is installing a county-wide free WiFi network for home users and its being paid for by the county government. Right now they're testing in a few select cities like Troy, where Kmart Headquarters is located (I used to work there, huge place). By next year it'll be county wide coverage for all WiFi users. The connection speed will be 512k which is faster than modem though not quite as fast as cable. I see a day where anyone can access the Net via these free WiFi nets and DSL and Cable will become premium services offering better speeds. The increase in speed will be what prompts people to pay for them, but the fact that anyone can use the free service will push these companies to make sure everyone can use their services if they so choose to do so.

  • On the post: Mind Over Mouse

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 17 Nov, 2005 @ 03:12am

    Re: Mind Over Mouse

    My soon to be ex is a diehard Christian so I KNOW exactly what she'd say about this.

    She'd call it the Mark of the Beast and say its a sign of the End Times. I've been hearing alot from people talking about this, and most of it started when Y2K was looming over us but its gotten much worse since 9/11.

    I'm not saying that religion is bad, I'm sort of thinking thing through on the whole Christanity subject right now, but there have been times in the past when people believed the end times were coming. During the Vietnam War is one good example, the transition to the 20th century from 1899 to 1900, and visitions by Halley's Comet in the early 1900 spurred on End Times fears.

    I didn't want to turn this into a religous debate but religion and technology have always bumped head from time to time in the past. Look at all of the religious opposition to Stem Cell Research. All the testimony from scientists tell us that this research will revolutionize medicine, but the religiously minded would just love for it to go away. There's also the notion of embedding chips in the body or the brain which is getting some resistance from the clergy.

    People cry and moan about the patant system in the US stagnating innovation. Well I can tell you that pressure from religious lobbyists also has just as powerful an effect.

  • On the post: Mind Over Mouse

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2005 @ 01:06pm

    Cyberpunk For Real

    From what I understand the Air Force has been experimenting with mind control flight systems for fighters. Pilots would be able to use standard controls for gross flight movements and mind control for pitch and yaw adjustments, issuing commands to the onboard computer, radar control, and targeting. This way the pilot never has to move his hands from the control stick.

    There was also a mind control device that supposed to ship for computers with a downhill ski game. You trained the device to read certain brainwaves as specific commands in the game and then you played by thought alone.

    I do understand that there is a project underway to find a way to artificially project images into the brain. The main object of the research is to develop "true" bionic eyes for the blind, but the technology could have other uses as well. Anyone ever read the novel Neuromancer or play the RPG Shadowrun?

  • On the post: Group Finds Prior Art On JPEG Patent; Hopefully Not Compressed As A JPEG

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2005 @ 11:57am

    Re: New Solution is Available

    My web design program Web Dwarf supports PNG and can even convert .JPG files to .PNG before it publishes your site online. Does PNG support animation like .gif? I'll follow the link the earlier comment to read more about it.

  • On the post: Group Finds Prior Art On JPEG Patent; Hopefully Not Compressed As A JPEG

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2005 @ 11:08am

    New Solution Needed

    We may need a new solution for image file formats.

    A good one should be built using Open Source Code. Files sizes would have to be small for photo-quality images, and the file format should be able to support animation like .gif files do now. An all in one file format to please everyone and its free for anyone to impliment.

    I'm no programmer, I'm trying to give the code-master here something to think about.

  • On the post: Sony BMG And The Art Of Too Little, Too Late: Finally Agrees To Pull Rootkit CDs

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 15 Nov, 2005 @ 12:57am

    Spread the Message.

    Spread the message, let the RIAA know that we aren't taking their crap anymore. Let them know we're tried of being treated like criminals or that as their customers we don't matter. Let them know we are tired of them violating our rights.

    I am, and I'm contacting my Senator and letting him know how horribly Sony dealt with this problem and how nobody likes the way the RIAA and Hollywood is treating all of us. I'll also tell him that if it does stop we won't do business with these groups anymore.

    If all of us of voting age did this watch what happens with the RIAA and Hollywood. The almighty dollar talks, and if their revenue is treatened because we won't take it anymore just watch how fast they cave in.

  • On the post: Taking Back The Net… Or Just Next Generation Focus Groups?

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 14 Nov, 2005 @ 12:14pm

    Re: Eyes Wide Shut

    It tiz to laugh.

    Few people know or understand that the Internet has been around for a really long time.

    It began in the late 1950's as ARPANET, an experiment of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Pentagon. ARPNET was a system of interconnected computers at Strategic Command Air and Missile bases throughout the US. If a nuclear strike too out one of the bases there others could still communicate with one another, the White House, and the Pentagon. D for Defense was added to the name of the department and the network became DARPANET. In the 1970's universities and companies like IBM, HP and others were given access to DARPANET in the hopes that they could help build a new infrastructure for the network.

    It's during this time that technologies like Email, FTP, IRC, Usenet and Telnet were developed. DARPANET was released for civilian scientific use and handed over to the United Science Foundation to govern. In the early 1990's the newly named "Internet" was released for public use. The World Wide Web was developed to replace the aging GOPHER protocol and the rest is history. So who can we thank for the existance of the Internet? Why the Cold War and America's irrational fear of Communism, of course.

    As for the article, it is interesting. Focus Groups really never did much good. They're views were too narrow, they didn't offer up enough suggestions based on what everyone really wants, and they were often setup in such a way to please the people in charge of the research anyway.


  • On the post: Is Open-Source Dogma The Most Important Aspect Of The $100 Laptop?

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 14 Nov, 2005 @ 11:46am

    Re: There are some practical reasons to not us OSX

    Gomen-neesai, Nathan-san.

    That's the polite way to say "I'm sorry, Nathan" in Japanese. I'm just beginner in the language, very very complex, and I thought ANSI-C was hard!

    Anyway, that article caught me on a bad day and it was just enough to make me boil over. I'm very mean when I'm ticked off, and like my favorite Manga characters I suffer from "foot in mouth" disease when I'm angry.

    Anyway, I think an Open Source solution to the $100 laptops is a good move. Its a controlled hardware platform so a standardized OS can be fashioned to run on it the same as Mac OS X is designed to run on standard Mac hardware. Choosing Linux was a superb move because they can tinker with the source code to get exactly what they want and provide the best software and services to those who will be using it.

    Others here have said the same thing. I'm just restating it.

    I didn't know Doom 3 was out for Linux. My Linux Box though is an older system and probably couldn't run it. I need another hard drive to set up a Linux partition on this faster system to use it with my nVidia card. If most of the software I wanted to use was on Linux also I'd have moved to that platform a long time ago.

  • On the post: Is Open-Source Dogma The Most Important Aspect Of The $100 Laptop?

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 14 Nov, 2005 @ 09:18am

    OpenSource Not Practical?

    "sounds like putting the extreme application of open-source dogma ahead of practicality"

    I smell more Anti-OSS propoganda here. Anyone who hasn't tried Open Office 2.0, GIMP 2.0, FireFox, Tbunderbird, or the latest version of Linux has no right to say OSS isn't practical. It is practical and in many cases better than proprietary software.

    This is just another clandestine "Microsoft" backed attempt to discredit the Open Source Community.

    You might say, "but the article mentions nothing about Windows XP". You says that Steve Jobs offered to let them use Mac OS X for free. It still doesn't really matter. We Technies aren't stupid, we won't fooled by this filth. We are very aware of how ruthless MS is toward competition. Look at what they are doing in response to Google's services and what happened in Massechusettes over ODF.

    Yes, I'm Anti-Microsoft and Anti-DRM and I'm proud of it. I only use Windows XP because some of the software I use is only available on that platform. And, if Final Fantasy XI or Doom 3 were available on Linux I'd be running it full time. As a pennance I use FireFox to browse the web instead of IE and I use Thunderbird for email. I don't even own a copy of MS Office, I just use Open Office instead. I'm using FireFox now to post this reply. About 50% of the software I use on my PC everyday is Open Source, and 99% of the problems I run into are caused by Windows itself and proprietary software.

    So, the Dogma of Open Source Software is this...It Works!

  • On the post: Sony's Rootkit Infringes On Copyright?

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 14 Nov, 2005 @ 06:42am

    This Crap is Funny!

    It gets better and better.

    This whole mess with Sony/BMG is giving DRM in general a bad name. Nobody is going to use DRM infected products, companies are going to whine and cry that they aren't making enough money so they'll blame the P2P services as always. They'll sue more people and make the customers feel even more alienaged and angry.

    Its sad really, but we're seeing the beginnings of something that I HOPE will result in either a major shift in how the RIAA does business or the death of the RIAA as a whole...and the death of DRM along with them.

  • On the post: Sony BMG's Other Spyware

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 14 Nov, 2005 @ 03:21am

    Send A Clear Message...

    Let us all send a clear message to SonyBMG and other companies that use this technology.

    Tell them that if they continue to do this "WE WILL NEVER EVER AGAIN BUY THEIR PRODUCTS".

    Money talks and when their profits plunge due to a lack of sales thay'll either; 1. do the stupid thing and go after P2P more aggressively and ignore the real problem or 2. do the smart thing and quite treating their customers like criminals.

    I don't know about Great Britan (I love BBC shows BTW) or Canada but in the US you are innocent until proven guilty, and the RIAA is assuming EVERYONE is guilty. Thus, they're judging us all without due-process of law.

    The solution to this is crystal clear. I challenge AKK Techdirters (and Slashdotters) to BOYCOTT ALL PRODUCTS WITH DRM and send a clear message to these companies that WE WILL NOT STAND FOR IT ANY MORE!

  • On the post: Sony Finally Stops Producing Rootkits… Temporarily

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 13 Nov, 2005 @ 03:49am

    I Think It's Something Else...

    This annoucement seems to come right after the Department of Tyranny...uh...Homeland Security issues a statement saying "its your intelectual property but not your computers". Sounds like Sony is looking to keep those guys off their backs. All the Department of Homeland Security has to do is declare their rootkit DRM a National Security Risk and Sony will have remove CPX infected discs from the market perminently or they'll be in violation of the Patriot Act.

    My thinking is, they want to avoid this because then they really be in trouble. It would also spell trouble for a lot of other companies who are looking at using similar technology or have different types of DRM. Also, why hasn't the ACLU gotten involved in this? I'm sure they will eventaully, this is the sort of thing they exist for.

  • On the post: Intel Declares Game Over: Non-Existent WiMax Is Already A Success

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 10 Nov, 2005 @ 05:54pm

    Trying to make up for loosing to AMD...

    They are trying to get people to forget about them loosing ground to AMD's Athlon 64 processor and the fact that they don't offer an X86 compatible 64-bit chip themselves. Its just smoke and mirrors, an atempt at distraction that isn't working.

  • On the post: Can Malware Firms Use EULAs To Ban Security Firms From Stopping Spyware?

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 10 Nov, 2005 @ 05:34pm

    Re: Can Malware Firms Use EULAs To Ban Security

    No they can't get away with it. Case in point, California's law specifically prevents companies from attempting to back out of liability using EULAs as Sony is discovering.

    The wording of a EULA cannot ever be allowed to supercede the word of law. If a court allowed such a thing it would set an extremely dangerous precident. Fortunately, legal documents with wording that's supposed to let them bypass certain laws have been repeated defeated in the courts. No judge in his/her right mind would allow such a thing to happen.

    No unless they wanted to be disbarred.

  • On the post: Consumer Voice Finally Getting Heard On Copy Protection Ills?

    Michael Haney ( profile ), 10 Nov, 2005 @ 12:28pm

    AMEN BROTHER!!!

    Mike, I totally agree with everything you posted in that blog. Its about time we the consumers were treated with respect by the recording industry. This whole thing of treating us like criminals is getting way out of hand. The Sony Rootkit DRM fiasco, or what I like the call The Beginning of DRM's End, is just a symptom of this. Things have gone too far and its time for them to stop.

    No matter what new technology the RIAA or software publishers will come up with there will always be 12 year old computer-geek out there who'll find a way to crack it. Its time to give up and concern themselves less with prevention of piracy and concentrate to making better products so we will want to buy them instead of download them for free.

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